The 2014 Sea Otter Classic has kicked off today. Check inside for some early shots from ENVE, Troy Lee Designs custom painted bikes, Chris King XD (X01 / XX1) compatabile hubs, and more.

ENVE Composites has revamped their carbon mountain bike rims. Now called MSeries, they’re been completed reworked in and out. The design now uses a more U-Shaped design to improve vertical compliance and added a bead-less hook across all the rims. Each rim has a different height profile as well (28mm, 32mm, 34mm, and 34mm in ascending order)

Video:

Each model is ride tuned to fit a variety of riders better without hinging on the typical naming convention of AM/DH/FR/Trail/XC.

As the rims utilize a bead-less hook the tire profile changes slightly so they tuned the internal widths as well to accommodate for this update.

M50 fifty – (50% descend, 50% climb) // 29″ only (330g)
21mm ID

M60 forty – (60% Descend / 40% climb) // 29″ (397g) and 27.5″ (374g)
23mm ID

M70 thirty – (70% Descend, 30% climb) // 29″ (481g), 27.5″ (453g), and 26″ (433g)
25mm ID

M90 ten – (90% Descend, 10% climb) // 27.5″ (509g) and 26″ (487g)
25mm ID

If you swing by the ENVE booth you can demo their wheels and try out the Chris King XD hub as well if you’ve got a compatible drivetrain. In addition to that they’re holding a contest where you can win a Blendtec blender.

Hyper has been popping up more and more. They had one of their frames out early and we grabbed a few shots of it.

Troy Lee Designs emplyos some talented painters and they had a few of their custom painted bikes out in front on display.

Renthal has been coming on strong in the cycling industry with their product lineup. They had their fatbar lites on display that are quite popular. 740mm in width, a scant 180g, and in a variety of sweeps and rises. A flat bar option is in the works as well.

A short 40mm stem is also available. With riders looking to extend the top tube length on a lot of modern bikes these shorter stems are in high demand.

Chris King just released their XX1/X01 compatabile XD drivers and hub options. This lets you run the SRAM 10-42t cassettes that have become quite the hot item for 1x drivetrains.  They’ve done a nice job with the design and have managed to maintain the needle-bearing as well where most hubs utilize a cartridge bearing. You can read the details on the hub as well that we posted previously. Additional photos can be seen in the gallery.

Fatbikes have become more popular and RockShox has released their BLUTO to this segment.

Stay tuned for more coverage on the 2014 Sea Otter Classic by keeping a tab on the tag or category we’ve created for this event.